English Language and Literature Commons^™

Rhizome National Identity: "Scatlin's Psychic Defense' In Trainspotting, Jennifer Jeffers

Jennifer M. Jeffers

No abstract provided.

Praesentia Sublimis: Studies In The Differend, Dylan T. Vaughan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Interrogating the notion of the differend, taken from Jean-Franҫois Lyotard’s book of the same name, in which a wrong occurs along with the impossibility of its representation as a wrong, this thesis attempts to rearticulate the relationship between the distant and heterogeneous theories dealing with a supposedly common subject matter: namely, the sublime. The sublime as it is taken up in the rhetorical pedagogy of Longinus, the transcendental aesthetic of Immanuel Kant, and the postmodern theory of Jean-Franҫois Lyotard refuses to yield a shared dimension that could bind together these major moments of thought. There are sublimes, it seems, …

Rhetorics Of Self In Eighteenth-Century Biography, Nathaniel Don Norman

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the rhetorical methods that eighteenth-century biographers use to produce selfhood and to educate readers in behaviors that promote sociability. The interventions of the New Science’s inductive epistemology in rhetoric and conceptualizations of selfhood, as well as the rise of print culture, offer a foundation for exploring the emergence of the modern biographical form in the eighteenth century. In its development, eighteenth-century biography utilizes various rhetorical techniques to create a rhetoric of self, which arranges documented, lived experience into a print selfhood that readers can observe empirically and sympathetically, an engagement with the print person through which they …

Military Virtue In Roman Rhetorical Education, Anthony Edward Zupancic

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the connection between rhetoric and military culture in the early Roman Empire. Despite obvious references to the military and martial virtues, little scholarly attention has been directed to exploring the possibilities located within this connection. This dissertation is an alternative cultural history of rhetorical theory and pedagogy that draws on close reading and philology, as well as performance and metaphor theory. In building on the cultural history of Rome, I introduce a concept of “military virtue” that expands on understandings of the Roman notion of virtus (virtue) found in recent scholarship. Since virtue in the ancient world …

Memory, History, And Forgetting In The Sandra Allen Collection Of Papers On Mormonism: A Feminist Rhetorical Historiography Of Institutional Intervention In The Equal Rights Amendment, Valerie Kinsey

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation leverages archival theory, public memory theory, feminist historiography, and rhetorical theory to argue that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reinterpreted the Mormon past to engender identification and foster political action during the Equal Rights Amendment ratification period (1976-1981). Chapter One provides readers with an orientation to the Sandra Allen Collection of Papers on Mormonism and argues that its creator, Sandra Allen, marshaled her understanding of archiving, history writing, and institutional archives to make her history public. Chapter Two: On Memory uses theories of public memory to explain why the Mormon Church built the Nauvoo Monument …

Erichtho’S Mouth: Persuasive Speaking, Sexuality And Magic, Lauren E. Devoe

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Since classical times, the witch has remained an eerie, powerful and foreboding figure in literature and drama. Often beautiful and alluring, like Circe, and just as often terrifying and aged, like Shakespeare’s Wyrd Sisters, the witch lives ever just outside the margins of polite society. In John Marston’s Sophonisba, or The Wonder of Women the witch’s ability to persuade through the use of language is Marston’s commentary on the power of poetry, theater and women’s speech in early modern Britain. Erichtho is the ultimate example of a terrifying woman who uses linguistic persuasion to change the course of nations. Throughout …

His Words Spoke To Me: An Analysis Of Cult Rhetoric Through Memoir, Devan Leigh Lemke

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Through my analysis of memoirs of former cult members, a pattern of rhetorical coercive techniques grounded in the theories of Kenneth Burke and Chaim Perelman surfaces. Burke’s theory of identification presents an explanation of why group members believe they share the same interests as the group. Perelman’s theory of disassociation explains why the group believes outrageous statements made. Perelman’s theory of presence explains why it is impossible to logically express any concerns within the group. The simultaneous existence of all three theories renders a powerful blow to the human psyche. The identity of the member is so shattered, that they …

Propaganda Powers Social Reform: The Visual Rhetoric Of Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, And Norman Rockwell, Shelly Stock Halling

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The scope of this thesis is an examination of visual rhetoric and its societal impacts. The framework is an historical timeline from the end of the 19^th century to the middle of the 20^th century. The thesis is an interdisciplinary activity that embeds Art History in American Studies. It is beneficial to scholars in a variety of fields, including, but not limited to: English, American Studies, Art History, Photography, Sociology, Anthropology, and History. It braids together the theoretical perspectives of propaganda, visual rhetoric, and advocacy. The thesis is based on library research with no outside funding.

Julian Of Norwich: Voicing The Vernacular, Therese Elaine Novotny

Dissertations (1934 -)

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), the subject of my dissertation, was a Christian mystic whose writings, Revelation of Love and A Book of Showings, are the earliest surviving texts in the English language written by a woman. The question that has puzzled scholars is how could a woman of her time express her vision in such innovative and literary language? The reason scholars have puzzled over this for centuries is that women had been denied access to traditional education. Some scholars have answered this problem through close textual comparisons linking her text to those in the patristic tradition or through modern …

Navigating Collective Activity Systems: An Approach Towards Rhetorical Inquiry, Katherine Jesse Royce

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this formative intervention was to design a professional and technical communications course around rhetorical inquiry. The participants, undergraduate health sciences majors (N=22 for section A, N=20 section B), were observed throughout the fall semester of the 2014-2015 academic year. A rhetorical inquiry framework was applied via activity systems, and data were collected using several methodologies including participant observations, research questionnaires, as well as participant deliverables, and were transcribed using Daisy Mwanza's Eight-Step Model. Results demonstrated students successfully used activity systems as a means of approaching rhetorical inquiry. Furthermore, students indicated a high level of engagement in the …

A Model Citizen: Ethos, Conservation, And The Rhetorical Construction Of Aldo Leopold, Daniel Cryer

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of the twentieth centurys most versatile environmental communicators. Drawing on scholarship in environmental rhetoric, rhetorical genre theory, citizenship theory and ecofeminism, I argue that throughout his career Leopold offered evolving rhetorical versions of himself as ideals of ecological behavior to be emulated by his readers. The chapters analyze Leopold's ethos as it was constructed in his early-career writings in the New Mexico Game Protective Association Pine Cone, a wildlife protection broadsheet; in the Report on a Game Survey of the North Central States, his first book; in reports …

The Rhetoric Of Exile In The Preaching And Teaching Of The Anglo-Saxon Church: Glimpses Of The Cultural Ideology In Old English Homilies, Yi-Chin Huang

The Hilltop Review

Abstract.

This article explores how the early medieval vernacular homiletic discourse produced in Anglo-Saxon England strategically employs the rhetoric exile, a theme whose significance is also articulated widely in Old English poetry. As words denoting such similar ideas as exile, banishment, exclusion, casting/driving out, etc., recur significantly in the homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, including the homilies of Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the Blickling and Vercelli Codices, I propose an analysis of the instances in which the rhetoric about exile is used in preaching and theology in order to reveal not only the Church authors/teachers’ ability and effort to translate Latin …

Foundational Practices Of Online Writing Instruction, Beth L. Hewitt (Editor), Kevin Eric Depew (Editor)

English Faculty Bookshelf

This is an Open Textbook available through the Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/foundational-practices-of-online-writing-instruction. Reviews are available there.

Foundational Practices in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. Written by experts in the field (members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Effective Practices in OWI and other experts and stakeholders).... The editors believe that the field of writing studies is on a trajectory in which most courses will be mediated online to various degrees; therefore the principles detailed in this …

A Taste For Things: Sensory Rhetoric Beyond The Human, Justine Beatrice Wells

Theses and Dissertations

Amidst rising agricultural pollution, poor conditions for livestock animals, and disparity between “high” and “low” food cultures, gustatory taste has entered contemporary public rhetoric as a significant modality of intervention. This dissertation considers the environmentalist and social potential of this public embrace of sensory rhetoric. To do so, I build a rhetorical theory of sensation through a sensory re-engagement of the rhetorical tradition. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, I argue, embraced aesthetic taste as a site where rhetoric and ethics mingle, and yet in promoting its cultivation, they fell into elitism. The subsequent, Marxist discourse on sensory emancipation developed rhetoric’s sensory and …